03.27.05 Sunday @10:26 PM EST

I've been telling myself for ages that I need to do some Beauty & the Beast illustrations, for it's a story that I've been fascinated with for longer than I can remember. I want them to be elaborate and detailed and something that I can invest a lot of time in. As such, I need to come up with designs for the characters that I am 100% satisfied with. It's much easier to do that for Beauty than it is for Beast. I've been tossing around ideas for Beast for quite some time. Here is an older one that I had posted in the sketch blog some time ago, but it is far too cartoony. I want the Beast to be a believable Beast. This quick Photoshop sketch is a little closer to what I'm going for, but it still looks a bit too much like a costume. It's tricky, because I want his eyes to retain a very human quality about them. One of the freaky things about the Beast was supposed to be that even though he physically looked like a monster, he had the eyes of a man. He has to look angry, but kind of trapped and tormented at the same time. So I'm headed in the right direction, but his design still needs a lot of adjustment.

03.24.05 Thursday @11:10 PM EST

My hands felt the need to be busy while I was watching TV tonight, so I did some work in my sketchbook. After a few not so great warm up sketches I was finally able to turn out something halfway decent (using photo reference from a magazine).

It's right about now that I am really really missing my studio classes from college. I was turning out so much more art then that I didn't need nearly as much of a warm up period as I have the past couple of months when I want to work on something.

03.23.05 Wednesday @4:31 PM EST

I went back and made some changes to this picture. Now it feels finished.

03.08.05 Tuesday @8:52 PM EST

I'm not sure if I'm really happy with this or if it's even finished. I just don't know what else to do with it. As such, while I try to make up my mind feedback would be awesome.

03.06.05 Sunday @10:32 PM EST

I started coloring this sketch in Photoshop tonight.